Newly-discovered Mayan calendar in Guatemala proves (again) the world won't end in 2012

An archaeological expedition in the northeastern lowlands of Guatemala yields an amazing discovery: the "9th-century workplace of a city scribe, an unusual dwelling adorned with magnificent pictures of the king and other royals and the oldest known Maya calendar."
From Thomas Maugh's report in the Los Angeles Times, on the dig in the ruins of Xultun led by William Saturno of Boston University:

Beautiful 1919 Poe illustrations by Harry Clarke

                                                       

Verizon refused to help police locate unconscious man unless they paid his phone bill

Nancy Schaar at the Times Reporter:

A 62-year-old Carrollton area man was found unconscious and unresponsive Thursday morning during an intense search overnight by Carroll County sheriff deputies, an Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper and the patrol’s airplane. [Sheriff] Williams said he attempted to use the man’s cell phone signal to locate him, but the man was behind on his phone bill and the Verizon operator refused to connect the signal unless the sheriff’s department agreed to pay the overdue bill. After some disagreement, Williams agreed to pay $20 on the phone bill in order to find the man.

Jack Williamson on what the future meant in the era of scientifiction

Here's science fiction grand master Jack Williamson ruminating on what the future once meant, when he started working in the field, including a reading of an early essay on the future he wrote in the 1920s or 1930s:

Rider mask from Bob Basset

A nice piece today from Bob Basset, the genius
Ukrainian steampunk fetish mask-makers:

"Rider." "Rider" Art leather mask 

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.Shutdown, Restart, And Logoff Icons On The Desktop

You might want to have shortcuts on the Desktop for shutdown, hibernation, etc. Right-click on the Desktop and make a new shortcut by selecting New > Shortcut. Then in the Type the location of the item: box, enter “shutdown.exe -s -t 00”, where “00” is the delay in seconds.
(You can increase it.) You will then be asked to select a name (call it “Shutdown”, for example). After creating the shortcut, you can change the icon assigned to it by right clicking on the shortcut and selecting Properties. The window that comes up next has a “Change Icon” option, which is easy to use. For a Restart shortcut, use “shutdown.exe -r -t 00”. Replacing -r by -l

Limit Logon Hours For Users

Parents might want to limit their children’s computer usage, so they can set a time limit only between which they will be automatically allowed to log into their Windows account. Limited usage for particular users for certain time periods can be set through commands.The command for doingthis is:
net user /time:.

For example, “net user Anu /time:M- F,08:00-17:00” will only let the user Anu log in between 8 and 5 from Monday to Friday.

Startbutton in Windows XP displays the System Time

Download starclock.
This tiny piece of code comes with startclock.ini file for making configuration changes such as 12-hour clock with seconds, 24-hour clock, load program at startup, refresh rate (be careful while changing this setting; smaller the number, more the CPU usage) and hide tray icon. To exit
this program, press “Ctrl+Alt+x”. That’sit, now you can save precious space on the taskbar by replacing the clock from the system tray.

1.Replace Microsoft Windows XP “Copying…”animation

The Windows file copying animation is located in shell32.dll. This animation can be replaced or deleted with the help of a tool called Resource Hacker Download it From
http://files1.softwarepod.com/33821/reshack.zip
Shell32.dll can be found in \WINDOWS\system32 directory. Back up this DLL, and open a copy in Resource Hacker.